Here’s What Law Enforcement Can Recover From A
Seized iPhone

You may think of your iPhone as a friendly personal
assistant. But once it’s alone in a room full of law enforcement
officials, you might be surprised at the revealing things it will
say about you.

On Tuesday the American Civil
Liberties Union published
a report it obtained from a drug investigation by the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, documenting the
seizure and search of a suspect’s iPhone from her bedroom. While
it’s no surprise that a phone carries plenty of secrets, the
document presents in stark detail a list of that personal
information, including call logs, photos, videos, text messages,
Web history, eight different passwords for various services, and
perhaps most importantly, 659 previous locations of the phone
invisibly gathered from Wifi networks and cell towers.

“We know the police have started using tools that can do
this. We’ve known the iPhone retains records of the cell towers it
contacts. But we’ve never before seen the huge amount of data
police can obtain,” says ACLU technology lead Chris Soghoian, who
found the report in a court filing. “It shouldn’t be shocking. But
it’s one thing to know that they’re using it. It’s another to see
exactly what they get.”

The phone search and seizure
described in the documented case required a warrant. But the
legality of warrantless phone searches remains an open issue. At
U.S. borders or when arresting a suspect, for instance, police and
government officials have argued that no such warrant is
required.